Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (42 page)

***

Gobernador Deleon
held onto the sides of the podium, and launched into his speech.  It seemed as if El Gobernador was beginning by reading a slightly revised version of
El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan
, the credo of the radical
reconquista
crowd. Well, thought Alex Garabanda, why not? El Plan de Aztlan had been written in 1969 during Deleon’s heyday as a Chicano leader.  If he was not the actual father of El Plan, he had been there when it had been born.

Like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, “El Plan” was quite explicit in its goals. Like Mein Kampf, the plan was ridiculed as a bad joke for years.  Also like Mein Kampf, it had been brutally honest in its aims, and most importantly, it had never been forgotten, renounced or abandoned by the true believers.

Every year, another generation of Hispanic university students, members of FEChA, Nuestra Raza and the Nation of Aztlan, rededicated themselves to putting El Plan into action.  By the turn of the century, scores of these former student radicals had become judges, mayors, governors and congressmen.  Today, El Plan de Aztlan suddenly seemed to be within the reach of reality, and it was a natural point of connection between Deleon and the younger people, mostly students, in the crowds.  It occurred to Alex Garabanda that the reading of El Plan at the rally today sounded almost like the recitation of the Apostles’ Creed in a Catholic Mass.

“In the spirit of the new people, that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage, but also of the brutal gringo invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call for our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.

“We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for us by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts.  Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans.  We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent!

“Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggle against the foreigner gabachos who exploit our riches and destroy our culture.  With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our Mestizo nation! We are a bronze people with a bronze culture.  Before the world, before all of Nuevo Mexico, before all of our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos; we are Aztlan!

¡Por La Raza, Todo! ¡Fuera de La Raza, Nada!

For The Race, Everything!  Outside of the Race, Nothing!

***

Deleon began his speech
by reading, word for word, the prelude to the Plan de Aztlan.  Louis Carvahal had not been invited to help him to write it, Deleon had prepared it on his own, as he had written all of his own speeches over the last three decades. Still, it surprised him to hear Deleon begin by reading El Plan.  Many of the people in the crowd were obviously familiar with the words, and a hush fell over the Civic Plaza, broken only by the amplified voice of the governor, echoing off the walls of the buildings surrounding the plaza. When he arrived at the concluding phrases, the crowd erupted in cheers, and recited along with him:

¡Por La Raza, Todo!

¡Por La Raza, Todo!

¡Por La Raza, Todo!

They picked up the chant
and made it their own, repeating it over and over until their thousands of voices joined, swelled, and reverberated around the plaza.  Finally, Gobernador Deleon was forced to put up his hands and implore them to quiet down, so that he could continue, now with his own words.

“When the Anglos came to Nuevo Mexico, they  found a new culture already in place, a culture born of a new race created in the land of the sun, the Mestizo race, the bronze race of the Indohispano people.  Neither European nor exclusively Indian, this new race, was born of the soil more than three hundred years before the Yanqui robbers and thieves invaded our homeland! 

***

Carvahal considered Deleon’s peddling
of the Indo-Hispano fairytale to be almost comedic—the delusional pretense that the Native Americans had greeted the Spanish conquistadors as some kind of long-lost soul brothers. In fact, the first time the Spanish met the Indians living in what was to become New Mexico had been during Coronado’s gold-seeking expedition in 1540.  Some horses were stolen, perhaps the first horses ever introduced to the American west.  In retaliation, Coronado ordered over 200 of the closest Indians his soldiers could find to be burned alive in their dwellings. That was the bitter reality of the brutal Spanish conquest of New Mexico, not Deleon’s “Indo-Hispano bronze race” fable.

“Since 1948, the Yanqui imperialists have championed the cause of the Jews to illegally occupy what they call their land, 2,000 years after they abandoned it.  Yet the same Yanquis have been deaf to the cries of the Indohispano peoples, to reclaim their rightful lands only a century after it was stolen from them!  Only the long-suffering Indohispano peoples, who have never left their land, who have never renounced their legitimate claims to their land, only they are ignored!  Why do the Yanqui bosses in Washington and New York always hear the cries of the Jews in  far off Palestine, but they never hear the cries of the Indohispano people of Nuevo Mexico?

“Why?  Because for hundreds of years, the Anglos have always been thieves and pirates and despoilers, ever since the first Pilgrims stole the land from the native peoples of so-called New England.  Even at America’s birth, God Almighty Himself put the mark on that wicked country, by cracking its so-called Liberty Bell the first time it was rung. Yes, the broken liberty bell, which rang for African slavery, and the genocide of the Indians, and the theft of Aztlan from the Indohispano people!  What other nation goes to war just for corporate profit? What other nation has dropped atomic bombs on defenseless civilian cities? Only America, the wicked, America, the destroyer, America, the Satan of the world!”

***

Comandante Ramos was seated
in the first row of folding chairs, but well to the side of the podium, with Ranya seated next to him in turn. Deleon had been speaking for approximately five minutes.  What was taking Genizaro so long? Genizaro had been briefed to execute his mission soon after Deleon began, just in case the governor might give an uncharacteristically short speech and leave.  His speech was another collection of clichés and half-truths about Aztlan, but it seemed to work on the crowd, silencing them.  Even many of the flags and banner were still, just rolling softly in the breeze.

What was Genizaro waiting for?  Had he gotten cold feet? Had he been compromised and deserted his mission, or possibly even been detained or arrested, somehow? Ramos checked his watch again, and then searched the Regent Hotel with his eyes, looking across the Civic Plaza for any sign that Genizaro’s seventh floor location had been discovered. Deleon droned on—at least he showed no sign of quitting any time soon.

“But now, our long period of humiliation has ended!  Finally, the Treaty of Shame, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which was broken by the Anglos from the very first days, will at last be thrown into the trash heap of history where it had always belonged! The Anglos have never honored their part of the treaty, and now it is only justice that we, the rightful inhabitants of Aztlan, will put it aside.  As promised in the Treaty of Shame, the Spanish Land Grant territories will be returned to the rightful communal ownership of the entire people of Nuevo Mexico.  This time, our sacred land will not be carved up as so-called private property, to be raped and plundered for corporate profit.  This time, the land will be held communally, for all the legitimate, rightful members of La Raza, the new bronze race, the Indohispano peoples born of…”

***

Ranya, Basilio Ramos,
Luis Carvahal, Vicegobernador Magón, Alex Garabanda and every other person on the stage was watching Deleon when, without the slightest hint or warning, a red fountain sprayed out of the back of his yellow guayabera shirt.  He immediately crumpled and fell backward, his heart turned to pulp and his spinal column severed.  The muzzle blast of the assassin’s rifle, muffled inside of the sniper’s lair two hundred yards away, was no louder than a truck’s backfire.  The sonic crack of the single bullet passed unnoticed, lost among the echoes of the governor’s last amplified words.

After a few seconds for the reality of what they had just witnessed to be absorbed, most of the people on the stage sought cover from any following shots by simultaneously attempting to duck behind one another. Under most conditions, this hopeless exercise would have been comical, but there was nothing funny about their visceral fear during those first moments after the shooting.

Vicegobernador Magón, unlike the others who were cowering in huddles and fleeing off the stage, rose from his seat and advanced directly to the side of his fallen superior.  He sat on the stage by Deleon’s body and cradled his lifeless head and chest against himself.  After a quick check to determine the governor’s absolute, unambiguous, and irrevocable state of death, Vicegobernador Magón bravely stood in the open, with Deleon’s blood visibly staining his own white guayabera with dark red splotches. 

In complete disregard for the hidden assassin’s possible next shots, Magón once again took to the podium to calm the crowd.  This time, he forsook his usual overheated rhetoric, and his trademark theatrics with the silver machete.  With his voice low and solemn, he informed the assembled masses that the governor, their hero, had been shot and tragically, it appeared that he had been killed.  The thousands of clamoring protestors let out a collective gasp and wail of No-o-o!  Magón let them moan for a little while, and then he used the microphone to address the people, urging them to disperse peacefully, in memory of the late Gobernador Deleon. They should go home, and await further events…

Basilio Ramos, the Comandante of the elite Falcon Battalion, also bravely stood beside Magón with his pistol drawn, as if to personally defend him from the unseen assassin.  After a few moments, a squad of Milicianos armed with M-16s surrounded the vice-governor, pulled him off the stage and led him away to safety.  Later, observers would remark on Magón’s incredible composure and state of calm in the seconds and minutes after the assassination.  It was almost as if he sensed, somehow, that no second bullet would touch him on that fateful day.

***

After half an hour,
the Milicianos cleared a path through the crowds.  An ambulance with its lights flashing backed in toward the stage area from Marquette Avenue.  Most of the demonstrators had gradually dispersed from the Civic Plaza, leaving a carpet of abandoned signs and banners and trash in their wake.  The diehards converged on the vicinity around the stage, not willing to leave while Agustín Deleon’s blanket-covered corpse still lay where he had fallen.  The back stage area all around the ambulance was a tightly packed mass of anger, grief, confusion and despair, with people crying, screaming, clinging to one another and swearing blood oaths of revenge. 

Luis Carvahal followed Deleon’s body as it was carried from the stage on a gurney, traveling the last yards with him.  Félix Magón and the other VIPs had already departed in swarms of SUVs.  Milicianos in brown t-shirts and berets tried to clear a path in front of the ambulance out to Marquette Street, firing shots into the air from their M-16s.  This rifle fire sent the panicked crowds diving to the ground for cover, and again stranded the ambulance in a sea of bodies.  With kicks and curses and shouts, and help from someone’s amplified voice over the PA system imploring the crowd to make an opening for the ambulance, the vehicle was at last freed to move forward. Once out of the grip of the mob it quickly disappeared across Marquette Avenue, up Third Street past the police headquarters.

There was nothing left for the old reporter to do now but to go home, to reflect, and to write the final pages of the biography of Agustín Deleon.

The last groups of protestors who had spent an hour jammed tightly into the Civic Plaza began to leave.  Only the area near the stage was still crowded with the most ardent true believers, clinging to the fresh history they had just witnessed, unwilling to let it go.  Some still appeared shocked, but many more were furious, swearing to kill the gringo bastards who had assassinated Gobernador Deleon!

He wound his way through the milling crowd to where his old mountain bike was chained to a small tree, and unlocked it by twisting the three wheels of his combination to the correct numbers.  The tree was in the grassy area between the side of the stage and the county government building.  As he was pulling his cable lock free, he heard someone call his name, from behind him.

“Carvahal!”

He began to turn, and halfway around he was knocked senseless by a blow across his face from an iron bar.  His eyes exploded with white light, he felt the skin over his left cheek split.  He staggered, and would have collapsed if two men had not seized him by his arms and supported him. The world tilted and dropped from under his feet, as his field of vision began to shrink into a hazy circle surrounded by blackness.  The two men who held him up by the arms kicked his bicycle away and roughly shoved him back against the tree.  He had the momentary idiotic thought that they were going to extreme measures to steal his bike!  

Another man, who was wearing a black bandana across his face, took the cable bicycle lock and swiftly wrapped it several times around both his neck and the slender tree and snapped the ends together.  The plastic-covered steel cable was tight against his throat, forcing him to choke and gasp, still stunned, and still reeling from the blow across his cheek.